Word: xenophobia
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...that has (unduly) made itself a lightening rod to the world’s—and especially the Arab world’s—malcontents, such a measure has an entirely different meaning in Japan. Ostensibly focused only on terrorism, in Japan the law is really about xenophobia. An ethnically homogeneous island-country that has been virtually cut off from the outside world for centuries at a time, Japan is a relatively insular place. Despite slight regional variations in dialect, climate, and food, it often exudes the sense of being one large, middle-class neighborhood, comfortably indifferent...
...smug, jealous satisfaction in the downfall of Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan caused by her apparent plagiarism in her recently released “chick-lit” novel “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life.” Nor is there any xenophobia at work here. Anyone associated with Harvard must be appalled that Harvard’s name came to be associated first with an insubstantial work of chick-literature. Although I am not a Harvard College graduate, I was the student chief justice at Wellesley College many years ago and presided...
...With this line, the popular blog Gawker noticed a current that I almost missed in the "Opal Mehta" controversy: xenophobia. The contribution is small—issues of honesty and class are undoubtedly more important and apparent here—but it’s there. We in our enlightened, genteel Cantabrigian bubble may not comprehend, much less suspect the existence of, such sentiments, but that just tells me something I’ve always known—that we’re damn lucky to be here...
...xenophobia thesis makes sense when situated in a palpably post-9/11 national context. We’ve had fractious debates on the Dubai port scandal, immigration across the Mexican border, and outsourcing to India; Americans today are more distrustful and, in cases like this, possibly more resentful, of foreigners than they were 10 years...
That Viswanathan is an Indian American seems to have added to the vehemence of the national reaction. Xenophobia is the, well, elephant in the room that mainstream media not noticed just yet. It is a small beast, much smaller than honesty and class to be sure, but it’s there, and any complete explanation of the "Opal Mehta" controversy must take it into account...